TickTick for Teachers and Trainers

Episode 84 of The Teaching Space Podcast is about TickTick and why it's a helpful tool for teachers and trainers.

Introduction

In the last episode, I shared my love of note-taking apps... today's episode is about to-do list apps! Actually, it’s about one app in particular: TickTick. I’ve tested a lot of apps to manage my tasks including:

• Asana (I have a podcast about this)
• Workflowy
• Trello
• Notion
• ClickUp (for about 10 minutes)
• Todoist
• Wunderlist (now Microsoft To Do)

I am currently using TickTick, following Francesco's recommendation in episode 56 of the podcast. Almost 30 episodes later, I’m still using TickTick, so that’s probably a good sign!

What is Tick Tick?

Tick Tick is fundamentally a task manager. It encourages you to 'get to-dos out of your mind, and get them done in less time’.

I think it’s more of a project management tool (although not as sophisticated as Asana or ClickUp) as you can group lists under headings/folders. For example, in the screenshot below, you will see I have a group called ‘Master’s’ and underneath that, I have two separate lists, one for ‘study’ and one for ‘professional reading’. Each list can contain different tasks with different deadlines. Each task can have a small list of to-do items which can be checked off.

SCREENSHOT 1

What are TickTick’s Main Features?

TickTick has lists comprised of tasks. Lists can be grouped into folders as shown above (folder > lists > tasks).

Tasks (one-off and recurring) can be scheduled including reminders and locations. One of my favourite features of Tick Tick (also available in Todoist) is smart date parsing. This means that if you include a date and time in your task (e.g. ‘take dog to groomers tomorrow at 10am’) TickTick will automatically schedule and parse the information into a reminder. Another useful feature of TickTick is that you can add tasks through voice input. You can also send emails directly to TickTick to turn them into tasks. Remember your inbox is not your to-do list (see the inbox zero episode).

Another of my favourite features of TickTick is the different ways you can view your tasks. While most apps (like Todoist) will have a ‘today, next 7 days, inbox’ view of tasks, TickTick also features a calendar view (below). You can sync this calendar with your Google Calendar too. Incidentally, Todoist and TickTick are very similar apps, but it was the calendar feature, plus the ability to group lists, that made me switch from Todoist to TickTick.

Today, Next 7 Days, Inbox View

SCREENSHOT 2

Calendar View

SCREENSHOT 3

While I don’t tend to use them much, TickTick also includes smart lists, tags and priority setting. The app also has a built-in Pomodoro timer and a white noise maker.

Finally, you can gamify your task competition in the app if that's your bag and access detailed statistics. The gamification bit is not of interest to me, but it could be to your students.

Can I Use TickTick?

TickTick is available for Mac, Android phone and tablet, iPhone and iPad, Windows, web and Apple Watch. It is also available as a Chrome and Firefox extension. So yes, you can use TickTick. So can your students.

How Much is TickTick?

TickTick is free but to enjoy the most advanced features you need to upgrade. This will cost $27.99 a year and is well worth it in my opinion.

How is TickTick Useful for Teachers and Trainers?

Of course, any task or project management app is likely to make you a more productive teacher (listen to me talking about this on the Tools They Use podcast). However, these features in particular make TickTick a great choice for busy teachers and trainers:

• Calendar view (handy if you are in the Google eco-system at work and home but not necessary)
• Grouping lists - you can manage work tasks and home tasks with the same tool but keep them separate
• Web access - handy if your organisation does not allow you to download apps to your work computer
• Quick task entry with smart date parsing

Wrap Up

That’s it for today - I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you give TickTick a try, or if you already use it, please let me know. I would love to hear from you.

Support the Show

If you have enjoyed this episode please consider supporting the show by making a small donation towards the running costs on my Ko-fi page which you can find at ko-fi.com/theteachingspace. Alternatively, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or whether you listen to the show. Thank you.

Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions about this episode or thoughts you’d like to share please join The Teaching Space Community: community.theteachingspace.com. At the time of recording, the community is free to join. It’s just launched so I’m very keen to get some members in there to test it out and give me some feedback.

The show notes for this episode include any links I’ve mentioned; you can find them at theteachingspace.com.

Thanks for listening and I hope you’ll join me for the next episo